Sticker Word Matching

Here's a new tray activity that both S and I love...

Step 1:  Get a sheet of stickers (I cut this one in half because it repeated the same animals).
Step 2:  Write the words for the sticker pictures on a sheet of paper (I used the back side of recycled fliers to save paper).
Step 3:  Let your child match the sticker with the word.

I like this because it's so fast and easy, but it also develops good literacy skills because S has to use a variety of strategies to determine sticker placement (beginning letter sound, final letter sound, decoding, pictorial context clues, elimination, guessing).

I think this would also be easy to prepare several in advance for a flight or road trip.

Packing Toiletries

Some of my home organization ideas are probably obvious, but I want to share this in case.  One thing I do to save time packing for short trips is keep a Ziploc bag of travel size toiletries packed at all times.  Then I can grab it and go.  I get my travel toiletries from free sample offers by checking Money Saving Mom and Freebies4Mom or for free from the trial size bins at CVS and Target using coupons. 

Daddy Knows Best

My husband has been on top of the "Parent Hacks" lately.  First, he found ANOTHER use for breastmilk storage containers- to keep crayons in the diaper bag from breaking! 

Also, this past weekend we were out of town staying at a hotel and I meant to bring our baby monitor so we could keep an ear out for S from our adjoining friend's room.  Well, I forgot.  But since we have free minutes between our cell phones, we called each other and put the two on speaker phone and left one next to S's Pack-and-Play and kept the other with us!

Traveling Purse

We drove a few hours out of town this weekend and I packed a "purse" for S to entertain him on the drive.  I just took random objects (an old cell phone, hair clip, a watch that beeps...) put them in pockets and in the wallet for him to rummage through.  Don't worry, I kept a close eye since some of these objects could be a potential choking hazard.  I saw this idea on a blog recently, but now I can't seem to find it, so I apologize for not giving credit where credit is due!